Tigerlily
by Aerecura
Summary: "Violence is the purest expression of power." Morinth's nails suddenly dig in sharp, and Ariel Shepard gasps. "Don't you think?" An exploration of the sensuous pull of an Ardat-Yakshi's power. Rated M for suggestive themes and such.


A/N: Bioware is God and owns all, end of story.

This isn't nearly romance so much as it is just...lust. Rated M just to be safe. Enjoy.

* * *

The music in the VIP bar of the Afterlife is so loud that Ariel Shepard can feel it thrumming through her veins, filling them with a steady synth beat instead of blood. The honey-smooth vocals are a human female's, or an asari's, maybe, warm and sensuous. Vibrations from the bassline snake their way from the soles of Ariel's feet to the crown of her head.

She juts her hip against the bar, watching the club's occupants. A mass of bodies, twining around each other and twisting to the music like a single organism, fills the dance floor. Purple strobe lights from the pulsating plasma beam in the club's center stipple the dancers, occasionally highlighting one or two: a pair of turians locked in each others' arms, a writhing asari dancer dressed in a diaphanous gown that reveals more than it hides, a human woman with her hands above her head and a look of ecstasy on her face.

The woman is young, Ari realizes, not more than sixteen, and she is reminded of the reason she is here. For a moment the sage eyes and short, dark hair of the dancer make her look like Nef. Then the strobe light slips away, leaving the girl in the heaving dark.

Ariel's body tenses as she glances casually around the room, looking for the Ardat-Yakshi. She is a soldier, not an actress. Not an artist. She can't plunge her fingers into clay and mold it to her will like Nef could. Uneasiness makes the hair on her bare arms prickle. She doesn't know how to entrap Samara's daughter with this disguise.

_Act casual_, she reminds herself. _You're sticking out like a krogan in a linen shop._ Stretching her arms out on the bar, Ariel beckons the bartender. "I'll have a Sahrabarik Pistol, please."

The batarian grunts and busies himself with the shelves full of bottles behind him. Ariel takes a seat on one of the bar stools, missing the comforting weight of her Alliance casual-issue uniform. Right now she's wearing something Miranda lent her: supple black pants that cling to her skin, black heels, a filmy black top that goes sheer in the right light. There is even a daub of perfume in the hollow between her collarbones. When Ariel bends forward, she can smell the inviting scents of orange blossom and amber that linger on her skin like a kiss.

A glass slides down the bar, filled with a dark blue liquid. "Drink up," barks the batarian. She raises the glass in salute, then downs it in as few gulps as possible. A pleasing warmth fizzes in her throat.

She can't tell if it's the drink or something else, but the air feels different. Warmer. As if it's caressing her neck and running its fingers through her hair. Ariel surveys the jumble of dancers again, feeling a corresponding thrill run through her bare skin.

When she was sixteen, Ari could make an entire room watch her dance with just the hypnotizing sway of hips and waist.

She wonders if she can still do it.

Samara's presence in the antechamber of the VIP lounge fades in her mind as she pulls the beat of the music over her like a veil. Ariel takes a few steps towards the dance floor, which pulsates with _senses_: the tang of sweat, the shine of sequins and glitter caught in the light, the thrust of one body shoved up against another. She raises her arms above her head, dancing by herself first. Undulating in time to the song, she closes her eyes and starts to remember how easy this used to be. Then more people crowd around her, and she is swept away into the mass, just one more body reduced to a dark outline in the mob.

An asari bumps up from behind her. Ariel twists her neck. It isn't Morinth; the asari's skin is almost purple, and she lacks Samara's riveting eyes and sharp cheekbones. But her body shifts and bends like a spring breeze on Earth: languidly, unexpectedly. Ari recognizes the motions from her years of dance lessons worlds away. She is putting herself through the steps of an asari dance form called _kordakas_, designed to mimic the violent thunderstorms of Thessia's tropical regions. The first stage, the one the asari is tracing out with her hips now, is the snapping of the wind through leaves. The dance is meant to be performed as a duet, so Ariel copies her, snapping her wrists with the beat and rolling her shoulders back. The asari, her eyes sparkling, fits her body against Ari's. She can feel the warmth of breath on her neck.

She counts off the beats in her head, remembering the choreography a moment before it happens, like a forgotten dream dripping slowly back. _One-two-three-four. _They separate, fighting for space against the sweaty mass and arching their backs. _Five-six-seven-eight._ They come together again, and the asari grabs Ariel's hips to lift her lightly off the ground. Now, Ari knows, they have come to the next stage: _thyella_, the storm.

She leans back, elongating herself against the asari's form as they bend like a tree caught in the lashing of the rain. The asari slides her hands down Ari's sides, thumbs brushing against the smooth material of her shirt. A small crowd has cleared around them, allowing Ariel to spin outward. Each of them scissors a leg up until it is nearly perpendicular to the floor. Then they drop back to both feet and fall towards each other, melding their bodies once more. Ari's hands catch on the small of the asari's back. She can feel the pressure of her partner's fingers digging into her neck. Their cores press against each other, forming the eye of a straining hurricane.

At last, the wild fluctuations of their limbs slow. Hip against hip, shoulder against shoulder, they ripple to the rhythm of the music. The electronic beat slides into the next song, but they stand still. Finally, they face each other and incline their chins, acknowledging the skill of the other. The asari slides her hand into Ariel's and squeezes it, just for a moment, her lavender eyes flashing. "You're not bad, human," she shouts over the din as she weaves her way back through the crowd. "Not an asari, of course, but asari-trained. I can tell. It's been a pleasure..."

And with that she is gone.

Her limbs thoroughly loosened now, Ariel lets herself fall back into the pulsing mass. The surrounding hands of strangers grip her body, clenching the fabric of her shirt and the smoothness of her shoulders. In her core she can feel a candle of heat that burns slow but steady. After what seems like an eternity of dancing, she slips back to the bar, her shirt glued to her skin with sweat. She rests her head against the wall, closing her eyes.

_This might not be so hard after all, _she thinks.

A voice snakes its way into her ear. "You dance like the wind on my homeworld." The sound is low and taut with sensuality. Though the music is so loud Ariel's ears burn, each word cuts through the throbbing bass like a knife.

Ari turns. The asari lounging on the bar stool next to her could be Samara's twin, except for a few subtle differences. Her lips are a darker, bloodier purple, while her eyes burn with a fire that Ari finds inviting rather than threatening. "Yeah? You were watching me?" Her voice comes out sultrier than she had expected it to. The surprise of it makes her voice catch, and the asari leans in closer.

"I'd have to be a fool not to. You're the most interesting thing in here tonight. But you know that, don't you?" She raises an eyebrow, and Ariel feels a pulse of desire in her gut. "I've got a booth over there. In the shadows. Come with me."

"I – okay," she says, the sudden attraction making her stumble over her words.

The asari notices. "What've you got to be afraid of, hmm?"

Ariel affixes the smile back on her face. "Absolutely nothing," she answers, following her into the shadows.

* * *

"So tell me," the asari says, "how does a human woman learn to dance the _kordakas_?" She is sprawled languidly against a black leather couch, a drink clutched in her hand.

Ari finds herself telling her the truth. "I used to live on Mindoir. There was an asari trade route that ran through the Attican Traverse. Stopped at Mindoir. A luxury goods company had an outpost in my family's settlement. One of the employees was also a highly accomplished dancer." She rolls her eyes. "Good thing, too, because no one's really looking for eezo-infused lipstick and Egyptian cotton sheets from Earth on a farming colony. She made her money teaching us on the sly."

"Mindoir." The asari leans forward, clasping her fists. "I know that name. Batarians destroyed the place." Her eyes light up. "Were you there when it happened?"

"Ah-ah-ah." Ari wags a finger. "I've answered your question. You have to let me ask one now."

"Well." The asari licks her lips. "That's only fair. Try me."

"What's your name?"

She laughs, a rich, throaty sound. "That's not a very original question. But I'll tell you anyway. It's Morinth."

"Morinth." When Ariel repeats it, the name seems to dance on her lips as if alive: the trip of the tongue over the _m_, the sensuality of the _r, _the sudden stoppering of the _th_. Belatedly, a thought springs to her mind: _I have found my target. _But that thought fades to the back of her consciousness as Morinth catches her gaze again. _"_Now tell me yours," Morinth says.

"Nadira." Her dead sister's name rolls easily off her tongue.

The asari smiles. "Na-diiii-ra." She chews over the name just as Ariel had done to hers. Ari represses a shiver of pleasure from the sound. _Remember, _says a voice in her head, _Samara warned you... _"And why is pretty Nadira on Omega?"

"To refuel. I'm," Ariel says, leaning in like a conspirator, "an adventurer. I travel. I don't settle."

"Ahhhh," Morinth sighs. "I love travel. The blackness of space...the uncertainty and the thrill of it all..." She clenches her fists on the table and grins. "The violence. The violence you find wherever you go. Have you found it, Nadira?"

"Of course I have. Violence drives the making of every star system." She takes a long sip from her glass, her gaze never leaving Morinth's. "I find it...exciting, really."

"Mmm." The asari reaches across the table, taking one of Ariel's hands in hers. She runs her fingernails lightly over the palm. "Violence is the purest expression of power." Morinth's nails suddenly dig in sharp, and Ari gasps. "Don't you think?"

_I want to play too. _Ariel traces the pads of her fingers over Morinth's, then bends the fingers back until the asari's lips part in pain and pleasure. "Yes. I do think that. That's the allure of dancing, too. The expression of fury and passion with flesh and bone."

"How poetic." Morinth releases Ari's hands and leans back again. "When I was growing up on Thessia, I learned the _kordakas_ too. It was always my favorite style. Kind of like anarchy in dance form, you know?" She chuckles. "Of course you know. You danced it so well. Using the darkest places within yourself. That can't be taught."

Ariel finds herself mesmerized by the smooth movements of Morinth's lips, by the way her eyes flicker and grow dark with an energy she has never seen before. There is a spray of darker blue spots across Morinth's cheeks, she realizes. They remind her of the tiger lilies in her grandparents' garden back on Earth. The flowers' petals were a silky yellow adorned with orange and brown spots like freckles. Innocuously lovely. But the name suggested a hidden ferocity within.

Ariel finds that splash of dark spots, stark like stars against the asari's cerulean skin, incredibly enticing.

"And what do you do with the dark places in you, Morinth?" she asks.

Morinth grins. "What do you think?"

"Oh, I couldn't begin to guess." Heart pounding between her ribs, she leans forward. "I think...you'd have to show me." Ariel doesn't ever remember herself being so smooth, so forward. _But this is what the job entailed..._

Morinth smiles.

_...right?_

She takes Ariel's hand in her own, lifting it to her mouth as if to kiss it. At the last moment she opens her lips and takes a finger in her mouth, sucking it briefly. Ariel feels faint. "I was _so _hoping you'd say that," she purrs.

* * *

Morinth's apartment is surprisingly spare and clean. An unmade bed juts out of the wall, drawing attention to its invitingly pristine white sheets. A few statuettes, tall and twisted but made with obvious skill, are carefully arranged along one windowsill.

The asari catches Ari looking at them. "A previous suitor made those for me. Brilliant sculptor. She worked like she was in a trance – always gripped the clay like she was going to strangle the life out of it with her bare hands. Watching her work drove me _wild._"

"Mmm." Ari saunters over to the display, running her fingers over the artwork's sharp lines.

"But she doesn't...make these anymore."

Belatedly, Ariel realizes that she is holding Nef's work in her hands. She puts the statuette down and turns away. A chess table sits in another corner, the pieces arranged as if in the middle of a game. "You play chess?"

"Oh, _yes._ I love any game where your opponent believes she's about to win." Morinth takes a few steps closer, and Ari's breath hitches in her throat. "Just before you kill her."

"Is that a challenge?" For a moment, she wonders if the way these kinds of words seem to be dropping so easily from her lips is wise. _But Samara told me to distract her..._

Morinth's hands catch on Ariel's hips. Her gray eyes stare unwaveringly into Ari's green ones. "You should know by now, Nadira. I never issue anything _but_ challenges."

The shock of Morinth's lips on her own make her gasp. She has never been kissed by a woman before, much less an asari. Much less a target. But that thought falls away as Morinth's fingers travel to the small of her back, pressing her body against Ariel's own. A burning sensation fills her lower body, pounding as insistently as a heartbeat. Morinth's mouth is softer than any man's. The scent of her skin is, she thinks, the most beguiling she's ever smelled: like amberwood, and jasmine, and the metallic tang of something darker, carnal.

She gives in, then.

The kiss is smooth and sensuous at first, both of them enjoying the sensation of the other's lips. Morinth's hands keep moving up Ariel's back, digging into her neck and then finding the clasp that has kept her long, dark hair tied back. With a _crunch,_ the clasp breaks in the asari's grip, and Ariel's hair tumbles down around her face.

Morinth inhales with pleasure and draws back slightly. With a small push, she shoves Ariel up against a wall, pinning her. "You have," she breathes, "beautiful hair -" Then her lips are on Ari's again, hard this time. Her tongue pushes into Ariel's mouth, and she thrusts one leg in between Ari's, drawing their bodies even closer together. Ariel groans.

Her hands find the hem of the asari's shirt, creeping under it. The warm sensation of her fingernails on Morinth's skin makes her feel heady. Morinth takes a more direct rout, seizing Ariel's borrowed shirt in her fist and yanking at it until it tears. The filmy straps slide down over her shoulders. Her lips travel down Ariel's neck, leaving a damp trail towards the hollow of her throat. The sudden sharpness of her teeth against Ariel's skin causes her to cry out in mingled pain and pleasure. Morinth's nails dig into her sides and the smoothly muscled flesh of her stomach, leaving dull red claw marks.

Ariel realizes that her skin is tingling, not just with pleasure but with something static-y and heavy. With effort, she opens her eyes. A hazy cloud of biotic energy has descended on her arms and bare chest, emanating from Morinth's fingers. The asari's face is haloed in blue like some kind of forgotten saint. She tries to call her own biotic powers to her fingertips but finds herself unable. With one smooth, impossibly quick motion, Morinth pins her prey's arms to the wall with two knots of biotic power.

She traces one finger over the swell of Ariel's breasts, leaning in so close her breath is hot on Ari's face. _When did her eyes get so dark? _Ariel wonders. "Look into my eyes and tell me you want me. Tell me you'd kill for me. Anything I want." The finger droops lazily lower and lower until it is sweeping back and forth across the jut of Ariel's pelvic bones above her black pants. She can hardly breathe.

"Tell me you'd die for me, Nadira."

The fieriness in her veins spikes, but not in a pleasurable way. She feels truly endangered for the first time. The lack of a pistol at her side makes her uneasy, and she twists her hip away, trying to break free of Morinth's touch. _Something is wrong here. _"I'm not...Nadira..."

The sensation of desire falls away as abruptly as a velvet certain sweeping across a stage. Ariel chokes in a breath, trying to clear her thoughts, but it is like trying to catch handfuls of fog with her fists. "What do you mean, you're not Nadira? Is this a setup? What do you know?" spits Morinth. Her eyes have turned a true ebony now, making them look like twin black holes.

"Nothing, I know nothing," she wheezes, trying to regain control of her body. "Why are you -"

"The bitch found herself a little _helper, _did she?" the asari snarls. "Well, 'Nadira,' this'll be the last time she ever nets me like this!"

Ariel twitches her fingers experimentally and feels the answering tug of her biotics. The mist is beginning to disappear from her mind. With a jerk, she yanks her arms out of Morinth's biotic bonds. "End of the line, Morinth," she says with far more bravado than she feels.

The asari's hands strike out at her, pinning her back to the wall with a haze of blue. Ari's own biotics are no match for an Ardat-Yakshi's strength, and she struggles once again to break free. "You human whore, you'll regret the day you ever -"

The door to Morinth's apartment slides open without a sound. "Unhand my associate, Morinth," Samara says calmly.

Morinth turns around slowly, drawing in a shuddering gasp. She hisses a gutteral curse in the asari language. The shackles melt away from Ariel's wrists as Morinth focuses her power into a crackling ball of blue energy between her palms.

_It wasn't supposed to happen this way_, she thinks. The two asari advance on each other. _It wasn't supposed to happen this way at all._

* * *

Fifteen minutes later Ari is washing smatters of purple asari blood from her face in Morinth's 'fresher unit. The crack of the Ardat-Yakshi's skull against the floor had fractured it, covering the walls and furniture with a spray of blood and brain fluid.

Ari's skin is clammy to the touch, her eyes bloodshot. _I can't remember the last time I lost control like that. I failed. I failed. I..._

Hair tumbles around her cheeks in dark tangles. She can still feel Morinth's fingers digging into her scalp, shattering the hair clasp, feel her nails against willing skin flushed with desire. Her own skin.

The splash of icy water against her face makes her blink. She shivers, thumbs off the faucet, and leaves.

Samara is kneeling beside her daughter's ravaged body, hands together in prayer. A pang of guilt makes Ariel clench her teeth as she realizes that the justicar should have been given a moment alone, not the other way around. "I..." She trails off, not sure how to continue.

"You did not expect her to touch your mind as she did." Samara doesn't open her eyes or look up.

"No. I never imagined she would be so...insidious. And I've never even...with a woman..."

"That is the way of the Ardat-Yakshi, to trick their victims into complacency. But your strength gives you credit, Shepard. Most succumb immediately. You fought her, in the end."

Ariel kneels next to Morinth's body. "I hate losing control like that."

Samara sighs and raises her head. "As do we all. But now we have rid the galaxy of that threat and ensured that no one else may be subjected to her whims. Be glad."

"Are you? Glad, I mean?" Ari asks quietly.

Samara's eyes are glassy-eyed with pain. "I have just killed the smartest and strongest of my daughters. I am not glad of it." She stands. The knees of her red jumpsuit are stained maroon with blood. "Come. Let us leave this place."

Ariel nods. But at the door she turns back, her gaze lingering on Morinth's broken body, remembering the burning sensation of the asari's lips, the soft and chaotic feel of her tigerlily cheeks.

* * *

A/N: Well, dear readers, I hope you liked that! Ever since playing ME2, I was intrigued by the character of Morinth - and by Shepard's reaction to her. I mean, this is an incredibly powerful being to whom entire villages have sacrificed their daughters. It seemed weird that Shepard would go waltzing merrily in and be able to trick her so easily. So I changed that. I would adore knowing what you thought, so review, review, review!

Also, my beta is really cool. Go check out some of Skeasel's stuff, especially the story "Omega." You'll be glad you did.


End file.
